The town council either has too much on its plate or spends too much time chewing the fat that’s on it. Either way, it resulted in an inhospitable event last week for a town that supposedly thrives on hospitality.

The town council either has too much on its plate or spends too much time chewing the fat that’s on it. Either way, it resulted in an inhospitable event last week for a town that supposedly thrives on hospitality.

Council bungling spelled the end of a major $20+ million Hilton Hotel project without it being accorded an uninterrupted and fair public hearing. The town may be worse off for it in hindsight.

Here’s what happened.

The council convened at 6:30 p.m. and by 11 p.m. some councilors and many in the audience had reached a point of intellectual exhaustion. That prompted Councilors Ann Canedy and Janice Barton to forcefully note the hour as Councilor Harold Tobey moved to extend the meeting beyond its 11 p.m. deadline by rule.

Tobey’s motion didn’t carry as tired minds and bodies raised the white flag of surrender to fatigue. Was there a conspiracy afoot akin to premeditated murder of progress?

The most contentious item on the agenda was the proposal for the Hilton Garden Inn on Route 28 and Spring Street. That item and a few other relatively important matters such as the seawall repair override proposal in Barnstable Harbor listed under “new business” were, to begin, unceremoniously relegated to the back burner. The council agreed to take items out of order and hear new business before the “old business” that had been listed first on the agenda distributed to councilors and the public.

That was bombshell enough for the cadre of lawyers, engineers, architects, traffic and water experts, town bureaucrats, Chamber of Commerce functionaries, members of the public and business who turned out to speak to the issue one way or another and made to wait longer than necessary, then, adding insult to injury, were cut off at the pass like a herd of spooked cattle.

When the hotel project was finally taken up at 10 p.m. amid the placement of tripods to hold charts and maps, the presentation got under way as a squad of engineers and visiting specialists presented various aspects of the project and an executive from the Hilton organization touted its benefits to the community.

Then came the 11 p.m. cry of “we’re tired,” leaving the stunned hotel proponents hanging three-quarters of the way through their presentations and being told to return on Oct. 15 to finish. It was embarrassing, rude and discourteous. That ain’t no way to treat a proposal of such import.

The council, by design or happenstance, used up too much time dealing with issues and reports that could have been quickly voted without the usual felicitous and irrelevant commentary.

Examples: Loquacious Councilor Greg Milne couldn’t control himself again as he regaled the audience with banter about his monthly coffee hours to make a point about a citizen who had questioned the council’s right to limit free speech – which wasn’t on the agenda.

That triggered usually taciturn Councilor Harold Tobey, with tongue in cheek, to repartee something about his “single malt scotch hour” a jovial put-down of Milne’s recurring references to his beloved coffee hours. None of this was necessary to town business given the amount of it to follow.

Then there was the summary report of the ex-Charter Commission commenting again on what had already been reported and noting the proposal faces an “up or down” public vote in November.

Unfortunately, the charter crew passed up a last-minute opportunity to tweak the proposal once more by enlarging the council to 39 members. That way, the town could have three shifts of nit-picking legislators second-guessing the town experts 24/7. That would assure important business gets done, that people who come from all over the place to present new projects get an ample hearing and that the advocates of free speech at council sessions be given the floor nightly from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. to spew whatever irrelevant verbiage they want.

Councilor Milne, to his credit, did pooh-pooh the council’s obsession to nitpick two items concerning relatively straightforward conservation restrictions that had been vetted by the administration.

Whoever prepares the council agenda should take a more realistic look at how much business can be finished in the hours allotted.

Now that the project has been withdrawn, the town is left with suspicions of conspiratorial foul play by the council and an ephemeral dream of what might have been.

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